Case Story

 

From Breakdown to Blueprint:

How Education Co. turned transformed crisis

into a system for high-performance collaboration

Client Mandate 

Repair relational damage after a catastrophic project failure and rebuild a leadership team’s ability to work together effectively.

Our Starting Point 

    • Leadership team fractured after high-profile project collapse
    • Multiple resignations and emergency CEO intervention
    • Lingering grudges and guarded communication
    • No shared norms or process for navigating conflict

Our Success

  • Unified team with co-created norms and accountability systems
  • “Working With Me” profiles deepening mutual understanding
  • Clear protocols for conflict resolution and decision-making
  • Psychological safety framework embedded in daily work

Our Starting Point

Education Co’s executive team had just emerged from a significant project failure. A high-profile initiative collapsed under pressure, triggering multiple resignations and requiring emergency CEO intervention. The result: a fractured team, struggling with mistrust.

Each leader was individually excellent—but collective performance had broken down. Hard conversations were avoided. Communication turned cautious and political. Without a common way to handle disagreement, collaboration had stalled.

Their strength in operating independently had become a liability when alignment mattered most.

The team didn’t need an offsite. They needed to relearn how to collaborate under real pressure.

Our Journey

MileZero stepped in to work Education Co’s team to help them rebuild trust and develop the capability to collaborate productively, even in conflict.

Together, we:

  • Faced the failure head-on with a facilitated “Elephant in the Room” session that surfaced hidden tensions and enabled open, honest acknowledgment of what went wrong.
  • Rebuilt psychological safety from the ground up using a research-backed framework with five progressive levels, giving the team a shared vocabulary and roadmap for rebuilding trust.
  • Defined “how we work together” through a “Best Team Ever” exercise, translating past moments of excellence into eight specific, co-created team agreements.
  • Developed “Working With Me” profiles to reveal each leader’s communication style, stress triggers, and working conditions—boosting empathy and reducing friction.
  • Transformed meetings into performance tools by redesigning preparation, participation, and follow-up to reinforce the team’s new norms in daily routines.
  • Adopted an iterative mindset with “final for now” agreements that encouraged experimentation and helped the team see collaboration as a skill, not a fixed trait.

Our Progress

What started as damage control became a foundation for systematic collaboration.

The team not only repaired relationships, but they also built a shared operating system together. They now had tools, language, and habits to navigate tension, make decisions together, and hold each other accountable without drama or escalation.

By normalizing stressful situations and introducing structure for resolution, the team stopped avoiding difficult conversations and started having them productively. They didn’t just repair relationships—they developed the capability to navigate any interpersonal challenge.

What was once a high-risk, relationship-damaging dynamic became the blueprint for how Education Co approaches leadership collaboration. The framework and tools developed during this engagement provided a systematic approach to team effectiveness that the team continues to evangelize and build upon.

Today, Education Co no longer views collaboration as interpersonal chemistry. They treat it as a capability and competitive advantage.

Client Mandate 

Repair relational damage after a catastrophic project failure and rebuild a leadership team’s ability to work together effectively.

Our Starting Point 

  • Leadership team fractured after high-profile project collapse
  • Multiple resignations and emergency CEO intervention
  • Lingering grudges and guarded communication
  • No shared norms or process for navigating conflict

Our Success

  • Unified team with co-created norms and accountability systems
  • “Working With Me” profiles deepening mutual understanding
  • Clear protocols for conflict resolution and decision-making
  • Psychological safety framework embedded in daily work

Our Starting Point

Education Co’s executive team had just emerged from a significant project failure. A high-profile initiative collapsed under pressure, triggering multiple resignations and requiring emergency CEO intervention. The result: a fractured team, struggling with mistrust.

Each leader was individually excellent—but collective performance had broken down. Hard conversations were avoided. Communication turned cautious and political. Without a common way to handle disagreement, collaboration had stalled.

Their strength in operating independently had become a liability when alignment mattered most.

The team didn’t need an offsite. They needed to relearn how to collaborate under real pressure.

Our Journey

MileZero stepped in to work Education Co’s team to help them rebuild trust and develop the capability to collaborate productively, even in conflict.

Together, we:

  • Faced the failure head-on with a facilitated “Elephant in the Room” session that surfaced hidden tensions and enabled open, honest acknowledgment of what went wrong.
  • Rebuilt psychological safety from the ground up using a research-backed framework with five progressive levels, giving the team a shared vocabulary and roadmap for rebuilding trust.
  • Defined “how we work together” through a “Best Team Ever” exercise, translating past moments of excellence into eight specific, co-created team agreements.
  • Developed “Working With Me” profiles to reveal each leader’s communication style, stress triggers, and working conditions—boosting empathy and reducing friction.
  • Transformed meetings into performance tools by redesigning preparation, participation, and follow-up to reinforce the team’s new norms in daily routines.
  • Adopted an iterative mindset with “final for now” agreements that encouraged experimentation and helped the team see collaboration as a skill, not a fixed trait.

Our Progress

What started as damage control became a foundation for systematic collaboration.

The team not only repaired relationships, but they also built a shared operating system together. They now had tools, language, and habits to navigate tension, make decisions together, and hold each other accountable without drama or escalation.

By normalizing stressful situations and introducing structure for resolution, the team stopped avoiding difficult conversations and started having them productively. They didn’t just repair relationships—they developed the capability to navigate any interpersonal challenge.

What was once a high-risk, relationship-damaging dynamic became the blueprint for how Education Co approaches leadership collaboration. The framework and tools developed during this engagement provided a systematic approach to team effectiveness that the team continues to evangelize and build upon.

Today, Education Co no longer views collaboration as interpersonal chemistry. They treat it as a capability and competitive advantage.